Getting Started With FeedBurner

So, you have your blog all set for RSS. Now what? Well, you may want to look into some cool RSS services which will let you offer e-mail subscriptions, statistics, and much more.

Alright, I’ll admit I’m a bit biased, but I love FeedBurner. It is really hard to explain what FeedBurner does, because it does so much.

For starters, it allows you to provide your readers with a FeedBurner address, which will point to your blog’s feed. This is how you can track your feed’s statistics, such as how many subscribers you have an what feed readers they are using. FeedBurner also lets you change your feed’s format, offer e-mail subscriptions, create a nice feed landing page, ping some RSS aggregators, publish your feed as HTML, etc.

There really isn’t a true competitor that can do what FeedBurner does, which is why it is so darn popular.

Setting It Up

It is pretty easy to get started with FeedBurner. First you have to create an account. Once logged in you should be at your My Feeds page, this is where you can manage everything. To add a feed simply type your blog’s feed URL into the text box and click Next. Your blog’s feed URL will be different depending on what platform your blog uses, but for WordPress it should be something like “http://blogurl/feed/”.

On the next screen should be your blog’s title in the title field. The text field below is where you can set your FeedBurner URL, generally this will be your site’s name. Now click Next. Your FeedBurner feed should now be all set up.

Configure Your Blog

Now you have to change the feed URL in your blog’s template to point to your FeedBurner feed. Remember to change the auto-discovery URL as well.

If you are using WordPress and you know nothing about HTML, why not take a look at the official WordPress “Using FeedBurner” page?

Extra Goodies

To view your feed’s statistics or edit a feed, simply click on its name on the main FeedBurner screen. This page is pretty self explanatory.

In the Optimize page you can add all sorts of things into your feed, like “e-mail this”, “digg this” and “save to del.icio.us” links onto the bottom of each entry. You can also offer your feed in different formats, and even auto-insert your Amazon.com Associates ID when it detects an Amazon link.

In the Publicize section you can set up your feed as an e-mail newsletter, republish it as HTML, automatically ping popular blog aggregation services, and even create a rotating headline widget.

And finally there is the Monetize section, where you can add advertisements into your feed to get an extra bit of money. Although feed monetization isn’t “that good”, it might bring in a few extra bucks.

Please subscribe, or else I will cry. Do you really want to make a programmer cry?